


grow bold in a barren and desolate land

by Nyxierose



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Cross-Posted on Tumblr, F/M, Ficlet Collection
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-10-16
Packaged: 2019-11-12 10:41:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18009422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nyxierose/pseuds/Nyxierose
Summary: Assorted prompt fills and other short ficlets, cross-posted from tumblr.





	1. the worst of her

**Author's Note:**

> My previous Kabby ficlet compilation (find me in the shallows) hit the number of chapters I wanted to end it at, so here we are for round two and hopefully another 50 ficlets. As usual, variable ratings and setups and nothing's intentionally connected unless specifically noted.
> 
> Compilation title from "Be" by Hozier. I freaking had to.

Shock is a beautiful thing, she realizes once it passes and she has to face the rest of herself.

For a few weeks, on the other side of the stars, Abby is fine. No, more than that, she is as happy and whole as she has ever been. A manic episode the likes of which she has never experienced before and likely never will again, a glitch in her code brought on by being overwhelmed. But time passes, and she accepts that all of the things that surround her are going to stay, and that means…

That means…

The dark things come to her at night. She can't recall a time when she slept normal hours, and she has learned over the years how to keep this detail hidden from anyone she shares space with. Her late (first?) husband, who she lay beside for almost twenty years, had no idea. Her current partner doesn't either, as far as she can tell.

She'd know if Marcus had figured this out, she tells herself. She'd know, because he's never kept quiet about things she does that bother him, and she can't imagine him being alright with the fact she's running on four hours' sleep on the best days because her body cannot make peace with her past. Four hours' sleep and stimulants, not the pills she drowned in at the bottom of the world but something lighter and just enough to keep her from crashing. Perhaps she'll always need some kind of chemical help to be functional, perhaps-

She sits on the edge of the bed, not risking any physical contact, and breaks down. There is no reason she should be alive, given yet another second chance she hasn't earned. She should've died up in the sky, in the mountain, under control… from there the near-misses bleed together, but she's blown through nine lives and still she stands, still she wakes up every morning and gets to live a redemption she doesn't deserve. She's trying harder now, aware of her past mistakes, but that doesn't feel like enough. It may never feel like enough, and silent crying in the middle of the night won't help anything but it's a harmless enough outlet and-

She feels movement behind her, and a lifetime of hiding her every weakness comes crashing down.

False fronts, always so perfect. Abby learned that skill as a child and has never let go, and even in the worst of her addiction she did it well. There are still things, will always be things, that her partner does not know. The worst of her, the thoughts of self-inflicted endings, the fear of not being enough and the confirmation that she _isn't_ , the fact that every hell she faces is her fault, the-

"Bad dream?" Marcus's voice is soft, he's not fully awake enough to process her current state, but his hand on her shoulder is gentle enough.

"Haven't gotten that far," she breathes. The less she says the better, too much and she'll start actually crying and that's a mess she doesn't need and-

"Anything I can do?"

"No." She knows he does mean _anything_ , would do whatever she asked, but it's too easy to think of things one might do with one's longtime partner in a bedroom at night and no, no, she cannot. It's tempting to let herself be covered and kissed and fucked until everything goes comfortably numb, but that too is undeserved. That too is beyond what she ought to have.

He shifts and wraps his arms around her anyways, gently pulls her back against him and kisses the top of her head. "I'm here, Abby. Whatever you need."

"Why did I get so lucky."

They've had this conversation before - if she's honest with herself, they have it about once a week. But it's always been why did _they_ get so lucky, equal pain and equal blame. Never the worst of her, never the individual guilt and weight she faces. They have functioned as a combined entity for so long, in some form for almost their entire lives and as near-perfect partners for a decent length of time, and she is halfway tempted to lose herself in that identity. She could, but she won't, she can't, she-

"I don't think we're lucky," he murmurs. "Lucky would've been dead in the Ark or down in flames before we reached the ground. This isn't… I found you. That's the only good thing that happened after we fell from the sky."

"I hate when you're right." She hasn't said that in years, but it feels the tiniest bit playful and that there is a flicker of hope and-

"I love you too."

Sometimes, she thinks, all her motivation to keep going is wrapped up in this man. He's seen more of her than anyone else and still wants her, still does everything he can to keep her safe, still thinks she deserves that. Even when she herself doesn't.

She doesn't question that anymore. She did for a while, but then she hit her lowest point a while back and he stayed despite his disapproval and oh there is no getting rid of him. Until one of them finally manages to die, and she hopes they have time left before that tragedy, and-

"I'm not okay right now," she breathes.

"I know. I've known."

Of all the things he could've decided to stay silent about, he chose this one. Of course he did. Because he sees her, and he knows she's not about to take knife to wrist, and as long as she's no real danger to herself…

"I have to wait it out, Marcus. You should sleep. I'll be okay once it passes."

"You mean once you can barely breathe from crying too much and you pass out."

Yeah. He knows. She should've seen that coming.

"I'm not going to hurt myself." She's crashing harder now, and it'll be a rough few minutes but she'll fight through it because she is incapable of letting the dark things win, and she is safe and he has seen her cry before and-

"Let me wait it out with you."

"Fine. You're going to do it anyways, I might as well be okay with it."

They shift around each other so her face rests against the curve of his neck, and it's different to fall apart when she's so safe and warm. Still the same release, as she lets herself be overcome by sadness and guilt, but better as her partner holds her close and murmurs words she doesn't hear.

She should've tried this sooner. She'll hate herself in the morning for bringing him fully into the worst of her, but right now it feels amazing.

"You don't need to do this alone. You have never been alone."

"I open my eyes in the middle of the night and I see blood on my hands. I'm not-"

"We've both seen and done terrible things, Abby. But we are not terrible people. We are human and we have survived and I love you regardless of the rest of it."

She's too tired to fight him. She's too tired to do much of anything right now.

"I think I can sleep now."

"I'll be here when you wake up. I'll always be here."

If she were more lucid, she'd point out that he's almost died _several_ more times than she has, but right now she just wants to rest. And so she does, nested in her partner's arms, lost in the steady sound of his heartbeat.

He has seen the worst of her and still he stays. That and that alone gives her reason to wake up again.


	2. into hell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt - "Pull over. Let me drive for a while."
> 
> Modern AU (obvs).

Abby isn't sure what protocol is for bringing one's new partner along for the ride when driving across three states to rescue one's daughter, but right now she's too panicked to care. She is _not_ doing this shit alone.

It would be less stressful if she knew what was going on, so of course she doesn't. All she knows is that Clarke is in a hospital in New Jersey, of all godforsaken places. Why that is remains unknown, and there are too many terrifying options. And in this day and age, driving across Ohio and Pennsylvania is less time-consuming than trying to get a flight out. Gives Abby time to process the situation and brace for a further terrifying phone call, if there is one.

She's driving, for now. Pennsylvania does not seem to be a state with an ending, and nobody with a local license plate seems to have any idea what they're doing. It is now early morning, they have been on the road for seven hours, they have stopped three times for coffee at twenty-four-hour truck stops, and Abby is simultaneously too old and too young for every detail of this mess.

"You've been quiet for an hour," Marcus says, popping her bubble.

Yes, she wants to growl, yes she has been quiet because if she starts talking she won't stop and she is _scared_. Her goddamn kid is in the hospital, and that has never ended well. Clarke is 24 and therefore should be able to advocate for herself to some extent - this will not be a repeat of the summer camp incident, dear god, it is _impossible_ for the universe to fuck over the Griffin family that thoroughly a second time - but that is invalid if she's unconscious or self-destructive or…

Abby has worked in the medical field for the past twenty-five years. She's seen some shit. She _knows_ how many ways this could go bad, and she's envisioning all of them at once, and-

"Pull over. Let me drive for a while."

"Bad idea. You can't simultaneously drive and deal with me finally… doing whatever it is I am going to do if my body stays still long enough."

"Abby."

"They would not tell me why my kid is in the fucking hospital. That means either brain damage or psych ward. Neither of which I have a good feeling about in New Jersey."

"And this is why you need to not be driving right now. You could make things worse."

She really hates when he's right, and that happens a lot.

She's not sure what this relationship is, how she's going to explain the man beside her to anyone else. They've known each other a long time, been friends for a few years, been lovers for one of them so far. After how fabulously things ended the last time she cared about someone, Abby was in no rush to get in a new relationship, and she appreciates Marcus's patience. He accepts that they are undefined, entwined, living together because that house seemed too big for just her but unlikely to attempt a proper wedding. City hall, _maybe_ , she wouldn't be opposed. But nothing public, nothing she could lose, nothing-

Wordlessly, she takes the next exit and pulls into the nearest gas station parking lot.

"Do what the damn GPS tells you," she murmurs as she gets out of the car. She's exhausted and looks like hell and feels worse, and she leans back against the closed door to steady herself, and-

"She'll be okay. We'll be okay."

Abby is not normally a fan of anything that might get interpreted as PDA, but she collapses against her partner just as easily. He's warm and safe, enveloping her as much as he can and kissing her forehead.

"The last time I had a legitimate conversation with my daughter was after that one bad breakup," she murmurs. "She has _no_ idea you exist."

"We could say I'm a concerned friend. I'm that too."

"I'm probably going to be holding your hand a little too much for that to fly," Abby mutters. "And remember, she's half me. She'll see through that."

"We have three hours to figure this out."

"More like four, if not even longer. At this rate, we're headed straight into rush hour in Philadelphia ."

"More reason for you to take a nap," he murmurs, leaning down for a heartbeat kiss before letting her go. "And more time. I do remember that time you were awake for three days, but that was different."

"Yeah. That was an Ikea dining room set. This is maybe the only thing scarier than that."

She gets in on the passenger side, does her seatbelt, and curls up into as small a ball as she safely can. She's headed into hell, she needs this catnap.

"Wake me up if my phone goes off," she murmurs as she closes her eyes. "Or when we get there. Whichever comes first.

"Will do. We'll get through this, Abby."

"I love you."

"Rest. GPS says four and a half hours. That's as much as you normally sleep most nights…"

"I aim for six, and you can give me shit about that when this is over."

"Just pointing out…"

"Less talking, more driving."

Into hell, she thinks again as she fades out, but at least she's got someone good by her side.


	3. pretend to be normal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt - Sorry I treed your cat; it was kind of an uncontrollable impulse. I’m pretty strong and good at jumping, though. Hold my bag while I go get her down.
> 
> Aka after four long years, I finally wrote the Cat In A Tree fic with a slight non-human twist.

Marcus is either too old or too young for this crisis. He's genuinely unsure which.

What he is sure of - his mother is on a retreat in Colorado or somewhere thereabouts, which means he gets to deal with any household emergencies that might occur because he is a _good_ middle-aged only child, and the emergency in question is Pandora the cat got loose and is now apparently up a tree.

Completing the cliché, there's a woman standing underneath said tree who looks familiar in a way he can't quite place and suspects he doesn't want to. Yeah, there goes his nice quiet Sunday afternoon.

"I can explain," the woman says. He knows that voice, has definitely been yelled at by this person at some point in his life. The eyes, the hair, the hands on her hips like this wasn't on her priority list either - oh god, oh _god_ , this better not be-

"Please, by all means, try."

"I kinda… attempted to pick up your cat, and… aimed wrong."

Aimed. Wrong.

The goddamn cat is ten feet up a goddamn pine tree because a petite woman _threw_ it?!

"It's not my cat," he mutters, because he might as well dig himself a nice grave right fucking now and be done with it.

The woman - he went to high school with her, he's pretty sure, and the past twenty-five years have been good to her and she's much more attractive now than she was back then - gives him a not-particularly-subtle once-over, staring a few moments too long at his hands like she expects a wedding ring will spontaneously materialize.

"Well, whomever the cat belongs to, it was an accident so tell them that. And I can get it down."

Oh, this is gonna be good. Marcus still has some very definite questions about the situation, but it's turned into something he's going to enjoy watching go wrong even further.

"Exactly how do you plan to do that? I think there's a ladder in the garage, but I'm not sure-"

Nah, the way she's looking up and down the tree now, she's either going to climb it or ask if there's a fishing pole anywhere nearby. Which there probably is, the garage is a black hole that Marcus should probably clean out at some point before his mother dies because he's not getting rid of her junk _and_ herding whatever distant relatives he doesn't currently know about, but-

"Hold my purse and don't ask questions until I'm done."

So, climbing, then.

She practically throws her bag at him - he is absolutely amazed by the weight of such things, and he's starting to have a feel for how this woman could accidentally throw a small animal - and then what happens next is inhuman.

She climbs the tree alright, in a way that involves jumping and reminds him a bit of Tarzan, and gets further up in the tree than one might expect a person that size to be stable. From there, she reaches out, grabs the damn cat, and jumps down in a near-perfect superhero landing.

It is the strangest and most beautiful thing Marcus Kane has seen in forty-three years of life, and he is speechless.

Pandora, usually the most vocal cat he's ever seen, is equally shell-shocked as she is dropped on the ground.

"So how exactly did that happen?" Marcus asks as the woman dusts herself off.

"Are you referring to my abilities or how your cat got loose?"

"Both?"

"First thing, I made some great choices the week after my husband died and somewhere in there I got used as a supernatural chewtoy. Second… probably through the dog door in the backyard. Must've gotten unlocked somehow."

All of that sounds frightfully plausible, so he nods and goes with it. "You grew up around here," he says. "You look really familiar."

"And you do not, but I moved at eighteen and never looked back," she laughs, offering her hand. "Abby. Nice to re-meet you."

"Marcus. Thank you for…"

"I created a situation, least I can do is try to undo it," she shrugs. "And I think I kinda remember you now. Or at least kicking you in the shin during a choir concert."

He remembers the incident vividly - she stomped on his foot for good measure, he has a scar from it, and somehow no one around them noticed it happening - and nods.

"Small world. Again, I really didn't mean for the whole airborne feline thing and-"

"It's fine. Everything's fine now."

"Everything is not fine. You look like you're going to pass out."

"Overwhelmed. I'll be alright."

"Would you want to maybe meet up sometime? Talk about things? Let me buy you a drink and convince you I'm not as much of a human disaster as I look like?"

"Yeah. I… yeah."

She takes that as a good moment to walk away, and he lets it go. It's a small town. They'll find each other.

Not a good time for any of this, but sometimes life's like that.

"C'mon Pandora," he murmurs, picking up the cat and making a mental note to glue the dog door shut because it's been _years_ since that was necessary. "Let's go pretend we're normal."


	4. give up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Distracting kisses from someone that are meant to stop the other person from finishing their work, and give them kisses instead.
> 
> Modern AU. Because reasons.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long time no see. I, um... life happened. That's all I can say for myself. Still here, still kinda writing for these babes, probably always a mess of feelings about them so yeah. Hopefully it won't be another five months before I do another segment??

Once again, time has screwed him over.

There was a time when this was never a problem, a time when Marcus Kane had his shit together both publicly and privately. A time before becoming a town council referee, and much before acquiring a…

Can he say girlfriend? Does that sound pathetic for a man his age? Does he care what label gets pinned on the woman who is currently a little too close to him on their couch?

Whatever she is, Abby has made his life both better and worse. Better, in the sense that she's as stubborn as he is and has a fine eye for disasters. Worse, in that she's as stubborn as he is and tends to _cause_ disasters. Beautiful determined hurricane woman, best thing that ever happened to him and likely cause of his early death. He did not know how much it was possible to love another person until her.

Right now, she wants attention. She's not subtle, moving an inch closer every time he hisses at the tablet screen in his hands. He's pretty sure some of these proposals he's reading for installing a necessary but expensive set of traffic lights are in French or some other bizarre unintelligible hairball language. And he has to have some opinion on all of them by tomorrow night. And that is not going to happen if his damned girlfriend doesn't-

Sensing his level of frustration but not the part where she's making it worse, Abby decides this is the right moment for a cheek kiss. Damn her.

On the rare occasions he has to describe her to people who haven't met her - and the fact that such people _do_ exist in his orbit is frightening - he starts by comparing her to a cat. Affectionate as the mood hits, and when it hits there's no stopping her. It is a matter of minutes before she'll start shedding her winter layers and trying to get him out of his, he is absolutely sure of it. And while he won't complain, her timing is…

"You need to take a break," she murmurs as she kisses her way down his jaw, her hair flying in front of the tablet so now he _can't_ do anything.

"You need better timing," he counters, but he makes no move to push her off.

"Whatever that is, you're not-"

"Meeting's tomorrow. I need a plan."

"You hate this part."

She is not wrong. Marcus is good at certain parts of being a small-town politician - things involving development and school expansions and the migraine that is the budget. Where he loses patience is the complicated mundane, the details that should be simple but aren't because there are too many damned opinions involved in them. Like a traffic light that should've been put in ten years ago, in his opinion. In a more ideal world, he would not have to look at six different proposals for concrete, but here he is, doing just that because he _cannot_ make the wrong choice about something so petty.

"Now is not-"

She cuts him off with a proper kiss, and screw it, the deluge of emails will still be there later.

It is too easy to give up like this, too easy to accept that a perfect distraction is right here in his arms. He breaks apart to carefully put the tablet aside - priorities, and all that - and pulls her down and lets himself drown. This makes sense. This, he can do.

"You're too tense," she murmurs, because she likes to say things like that to throw him off-balance. It's how they started, three years ago when she got herself on his radar through a PR crisis, and how they continue, and-

"Fix that," he counters, consciously baiting her.

Three years since their worlds collided, two and a half since she kissed him half-drunk in the midst of a very long night, one and a half since it made sense for her to move in. She is no doubt aware of the simple ring currently in the pocket of a tuxedo jacket in the hallway closet, and equally aware he has no current plan for offering it to her. There is an unspoken permanence between them, and yet-

"Stay with me," she murmurs. Time is moving strangely, the movements of their bodies as they get closer to skin. He can do this on autopilot with her if she's in good headspace, as she seems to be now. On her more difficult days he has to be present in mind as well as body for those complicated encounters they have, because she can self-destruct through sex as well as sharp objects, but days like this…

Days like this, she knows his mind is in too many places but he accepts her intentions, and it's pleasantly enough.

Not a distraction, as she crashes into him. Not quite what she intended. He's running pros and cons in his mind, the different options still distinct, his process unbothered by the current state of his body. Perhaps this is a level of trust, to have this kind of sex with a trusted lover, to get lost in them without losing anything at all.

What Marcus is conscious of, with what brainpower isn't wondering why there are _options_ for renting traffic cones, is this: he is unspeakably and completely in love with the woman above him.

They fall, not quite together but enough. She separates her body from his for a few moments, repositioning herself to take up space against him without being too koala about it, and plants a few playful face kisses because she can. She, from what he can tell, is content.

"Did that help?" she asks. For the first time in fifteen minutes, her hair _isn't_ obscuring most of his field of vision. There may be an adjustment period there.

"A little." He takes a few hesitant breaths, decides to just ask the question that worries him. "Are you… are you alright when I'm…"

"I trust you enough," she replies. "I don't love it, god no. But I trust you."

"You can-"

"You could've pushed me off. You were at least _that_ aware. But you didn't. So I at least trust that you know what happened and it's not like that time I bit your ear or-"

"No one else will ever see that scar."

"They'd better not," she laughs.

Not that much time lost, in the grand scheme of things. And absolutely worth it.


End file.
